Package delivery without XCode

[Craig Treleaven]

Background - So I was following a discussion on another site about 
Apple's Aperture being replaced.  Many people are looking for 
alternatives and there has been essentially no mention of open source 
alternatives (like DarkTable, LightZone or DigiKam).  Most of these 
folks are photographers and would never consider installing MacPorts 
and XCode in order to get an application they might otherwise find 
interesting.

1) How much work would it take to have a mode in MacPorts where it 
only installs pre-compiled packages?  Is the assumption that XCode is 
present so deeply ingrained that Macports-base would have to be 
extensively re-designed?

For example, I would think 'port search' would need to be modified to 
only show the pre-compiled packages (available for that platform) and 
somehow indicate that only the default variants are available.

Perhaps a fork of Pallet could be so modified?

2) Are there a worthwhile number of packages that would then be 
available?  I know my own MythTV ports run into the OpenSSL conflict 
and therefore aren't available as binaries.  From 
http://packages.macports.org/ it appears we don't have binary 
packages for DarktTable or DigiKam (and no port of LightZone).

OTOH, someone posted some information several weeks ago explaining 
how to determine if that licence conflict really applies or not. 
(Involves inspecting library linkages, as I recall.)  I get the 
impression that our current policy is quite conservative and that a 
number of packages (many?) may actually qualify for binary 
distribution with some analysis and verification.

Craig